Israeli officials say they will further delay the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, as Israel continues to severely limit humanitarian aid to more than 2 million Palestinians suffering from hunger, malnutrition and severe shortages of medicine, clean water and other basic goods. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports Israeli fire has killed at least three Palestinians so far today — despite the ceasefire deal that went into effect last week. Israeli officials have threatened to end the truce if Hamas doesn’t return all the bodies of dead Israeli hostages. On Wednesday, Hamas said it had turned over two more bodies, bringing the total number to nine, but said it would need specialized equipment to search through the rubble to find the bodies of 19 remaining captives — many believe killed by Israeli strikes. The Israeli military is not allowing in that specialized equipment.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians who were forced by Israel to flee their neighborhoods are returning to find their homes in rubble. This is displaced Gaza City resident Umm al-Abed al-Fioumi.

Umm al-Abed al-Fioumi: “There is no work, no food, no drinks, no housing, and now winter is coming. By God Almighty, I’m telling you, I swear, we don’t have blankets. I have nothing, nothing at all. I left, and my house was destroyed, and I’m still in the same situation. And now we’re suffering. Where are we supposed to live? Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? There are about 36 of us here — me, my grandchildren, my daughters-in-law and my children — and we don’t know where to go or where to turn.”

The popular Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti is suffering from rib fractures after being beaten unconscious in Israeli prison, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office said Wednesday. His son, Arab Barghouti, said that the assault took place as his father was being transferred between prisons in Israel. According to Arab Barghouti, the beating allegedly took place after far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited Marwan Barghouti in prison in August and showed him a picture of an electric chair, telling him he deserved to be executed. Marwan Barghouti has been in prison for 20 years, serving five life sentences. Israel prevented his inclusion on the list of Palestinian prisoners to be freed as part of the ceasefire deal.

In Spain, hundreds of thousands of workers and students walked out of schools and workplaces on Wednesday in support of the Palestinian people and calling on the Spanish government to sever ties with Israel. Huge crowds of protesters marched in Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Seville and Madrid.

Silvia: “My conscience wouldn’t allow me to be home. It’s taken so long. It’s been two years for people to mobilize and say, 'Stop the genocide.' Spain should cut economic and diplomatic ties with the Israeli government. They speak nice words, but until we break ties, Israel will keep on doing whatever it wants.”

The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has provided details about the torture and abuse she and other participants of the Global Sumud Flotilla suffered in Israeli detention, after they were abducted on the high seas while attempting to bring food and medicine to Gaza. Thunberg describes a visit by Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Ktzi’ot Prison, where the activists were being held. She says he shouted, “You are terrorists! You want to kill Jewish babies!” and those who shouted back were taken aside and beaten. Thunberg says she was repeatedly kicked by guards, forced to undress, and was held in an insect-infested cell where she was deprived of food and water. She says she was repeatedly called a “whore” in Swedish by the Israeli guards, who scrawled the word and other profane graffiti on her suitcase. Thunberg said, “If Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”

President Trump says he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. This comes as the U.S. says it destroyed five boats in the Caribbean Sea allegedly carrying drugs, reportedly killing 27 people; four of those boats allegedly came from Venezuela. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Trump said, “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control.” In response, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro lashed out at the possibility of further U.S. intervention.

President Nicolás Maduro: “No to regime change, which reminds us so much of the endless failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on. No to CIA-orchestrated coup d’états, which recall the 30,000 disappeared in the CIA-backed coups against Argentina, Pinochet’s coup and the 5,000 young people who were killed or disappeared.”

Dozens of reporters handed in their access badges and walked out of the Pentagon Wednesday instead of agreeing to the Defense Department’s new press policy. The policy states that media outlets and reporters cannot obtain any information that the Pentagon does not explicitly authorize. About 40 to 50 journalists from major news outlets left together before the 4 p.m. deadline. Jack Keane, a retired U.S. Army general and analyst for Fox News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s former employer, said, “They want to spoon-feed information to the journalist, and that would be their story. That’s not journalism.” Only the One America News Network agreed to sign on to the Pentagon’s new press policy.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. During oral arguments, justices expressed skepticism over whether Section 2 of the landmark 1965 law should be allowed to continue. Section 2 outlaws the creation of election districts that dilute minority groups’ voting power. This comes as Republican state lawmakers in Texas, Missouri and Utah are pushing ahead with mid-decade redistricting efforts in 2025 ahead of next year’s midterm elections; other redistricting battles are underway in California, North Carolina and Ohio, as Republicans seek to hold their House and Senate majorities.

The federal government shutdown has entered its 16th day. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration from laying off 4,000 government workers across eight agencies, siding with unions. In her ruling, Judge Susan Illston wrote that the White House budget office and Office of Personnel Management have “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore and they can impose the structures that they like.” The ruling came as the Senate failed to pass a funding bill for the ninth time on Wednesday.

In immigration news, the Trump administration is preparing to deport a man arrested by ICE on the same day he was freed from a Pennsylvania prison, after serving 43 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. On October 3, 64-year-old Subramanyam Vedam walked free from Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, where he’d been held for over four decades, after his conviction for a 1982 murder was vacated. His freedom came three years after the Pennsylvania Innocence Project uncovered evidence that prosecutors had buried an FBI report that would have exonerated him. He was immediately arrested by ICE agents acting on a decades-old deportation order. He’s now being held at an ICE jail in central Pennsylvania and set to be deported to India. Vedam’s niece told the Miami Herald, “He left India when he was nine months old. … He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family — his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces — we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”

The Trump administration is considering a plan to radically curtail refugee admissions to the United States, while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration. That’s according to documents obtained by The New York Times, which reports the proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted. Among the beneficiaries would be members of the Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, whose leaders have revived Nazi slogans, minimized the Holocaust and promoted anti-immigrant hatred.

Members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus on Wednesday marched through the Capitol and to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office with Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, demanding that she be sworn in. Grijalva won a special election in Arizona more than three weeks ago. She would be the final 218th vote on a discharge petition to release the Epstein files. On Tuesday, Grijalva reported that she finally had access to her congressional office, but that the phone lines aren’t working, and there are no computers or internet in the office.

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is reportedly receiving preferential treatment at a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. According to The Wall Street Journal, Maxwell met with several visitors in the federal prison camp’s chapel back in August, while hundreds of prisoners were placed on lockdown and forced to stay in their dormitories.